Aircrew: The Story of the Men Who Flew the Bombers (30 page)

‘No,’ cut in Roger Clapp, the radio operator, ‘Don’t kid yourself, we are taking off on mission 13, and this is the one where we go down.’

On a superstitious impulse Odell slid through the 3x5 feet camera-hatch back onto the ground. He scrubbed his feet several times on the grass at the side of the runway before climbing once more into the aircraft.

Shortly after take-off, as they were forming up, Modlen, the front gunner, called up, ‘Dobby, the radical on my gunsight won’t light up. Did you pre-flight my turret?’

‘Sure I did,’ Odell lied, knowing the pilot and all the rest of the crew were listening on the interphone. The crew had always taken great pride in its operational efficiency. Back in the Overseas Training Unit at Casper, Wyoming, the previous March, they had been awarded their own bomber on completion of the course, one of only three crews, out of a total of forty, to receive this privilege. Since then, as operational experience increased, there had been a tendency to back off on some of the routine checks, to become slipshod. Odell cursed himself for being a stupid, lazy slob. He advised Modlen to take the small bulb out of his ‘trouble light’, (the movable inspection light) and use that to replace the defective one. In a moment Modlen was speaking again: ‘Dobby, there ain’t no bulb in the “trouble light”.’ So on that trip there were no sights on the aircraft’s front guns. Afterwards, Odell’s only consolation was that, as far as he knew, there had been no head-on attacks by fighters that morning.

Odell started to get his own gun ready. On a B-24 Liberator the 50mm flexible machine guns mounted in the waist of the
bomber were fired through open windows on both sides of the aircraft. The ammunition boxes had belts of 500 rounds and these rattled along flexible metal chutes to feed the guns. During firing the noise and vibration were unbelievable. Odell discovered that the hooks that attached the chute to his gun were missing. He had some safety wire in his ‘para bag’ and used that to fix up the chute. Then he checked his gun and got it firing satisfactorily. Meanwhile, Sergeant Hoganson, the right waist gunner, was having problems of his own. The chute fitted on his gun all right, but the apparatus that kept the gun steady while firing came off in his hand. Odell had a precious spool of nylon cord, the first he had ever been able to acquire. He used this to bind up the contraption as firmly as possible. By this time Odell was in an ugly mood, cursing the lousy job done by armourers when supposedly preparing an aircraft for a raid.

He was relieving his frustration by swinging his gun around with considerable violence when, all of a sudden, he knocked his front sight off. To top it all, just as ‘Ford’s Folly’ crossed the Belgian coast, the motor operating the hydraulics for the tail turret caught fire and burned out. This put the most effective gun position out of action. Odell was shocked by this latest mishap. If all this could happen to the guns, he mused unhappily, what about the state of everything else connected with this wreck of an airplane? The motors themselves sounded pretty rough to him.

As they flew over the Ardennes, Odell knew they would soon be swinging north, heading up towards Hanover. He was sitting on one of his ‘personal bombs’, an empty ammunition box. He usually carried one or two of these heavy wooden containers to chuck out over the target. As he stared out of his open gun position, he realized they were stationed in one of the most vulnerable sections – lower left squadron, with only ‘Tail-end Charlie’ behind them.

Suddenly someone yelled ‘Fighters!’ They were all around. ME109s – the sky seemed to be black with them. Odell fired at one enemy plane. It broke away right under the Liberator, so close he could see the German in his cockpit. The enemy pilot was wily enough not to finish up on the bomber’s tail where the gunner would normally have the best shot at him. Tail-gunners
had no worries about deflection; they just laid the sight on the fighter’s nose and blazed away. Their attacker was not to know Sergeant Place was sitting impotently behind his guns, the tail turret useless.

The Messerschmitts kept coming in on a pursuit curve. They started their attack about three or four thousand feet ahead and a thousand feet above, then rolled over and started firing as they closed in. Odell thought he had hit the next ME109 that came in. As the fighter broke away it was trailing thick black smoke and he felt sure it was going down. Then he recalled being told about the synthetic fuel the Germans were using, apparently made from coal and God knows what. When their pilots hit the throttles for maximum power while breaking away it was no wonder they made smoke with that stuff in the cylinders.

‘Hoggy’, the other waist gunner, was doing well. He exploded an attacking fighter and punched Odell on the shoulder to look round and see it so he could verify it later at squadron interrogation. Odell had already seen him blow another one out of the sky just a few seconds earlier.

The next one looked as if it was coming straight for Odell; the yellow nose cone was pointing directly at him. This time he was certain his shells had smashed home; the fighter was burning all along the wings. He waited for the enemy to explode. Then, as it came closer, he realized that the flames were only flashes from the ME109’s wing guns as it fired at him. Next moment a 20mm shell, maybe from the gun in that yellow nose cone, hit Odell’s gun and exploded. Most of the white-hot metal fragments hit him in the chest, but one piece struck him clean between the eyes. It cut through his hard rubber goggle frame and entered his head right at the top of his nose. The force of the explosion knocked him down on the deck. Although he did not know it at the time, the shell had smashed both his legs. Everything went black. He could not see, but was still aware of what was going on. Over his headphones he was conscious of Spencer, the bombardier, telling Rudd that he should salvo the bombs to lighten the aircraft, because by that time both motors on the right wing were out of action; No 3 was feathered, while No 4 was windmilling and burning. Try as
they could, they were unable to get the prop to feather completely on No 4.

Every few moments Odell heard someone on the interphone yell out, ‘More fighters coming in!’ In fact there was a continuous babble of voices and Hoggy said several times, ‘Dobby’s been hit. Dobby’s been hit.’ Then Dawson, the navigator, cut in: ‘Get off the damned interphone, Hoganson.’ He wanted everyone to be quiet so no essential orders would be missed. Unknown to Odell, Mainard, the upper-turret gunner, had been hit and possibly killed in the first fighter attack. His canopy was shot away and Roger Clapp, the radio operator, saw him slump forward and then slither out of his turret, down onto the floor below. Roger put Mainard’s head in his lap and tried to put a bandage over a gaping hole in his skull, but the gunner never spoke, or even opened his eyes.

The situation was more than desperate – two engines knocked out and only Hoganson’s waist gun still firing. Odell could not figure out how Hoggy kept going the way he did. After a while, Odell was able to see out of his right eye. There was blood running out of his head and dripping into the severed half of his goggles dangling on his left cheek. He tried to raise himself up, but did not get very far. Hoggy was still firing, but then he was hit and fell down on top of Odell. He struggled back up, holding on to his shoulder, turned round and tried to charge Odell’s gun to get it firing again, but it had been completely knocked out in the explosion. Then Odell watched Hoggy swing back to his own gun and fire at another fighter. He hit it for sure. In a moment Hoggy was struck again and collapsed onto Odell a second time. Incredibly, he got back up.

His oxygen mask was hanging off and blood was pouring down his face. He fired at the plane he had just hit as it dived past the Liberator’s right wing. The Messerschmitt was burning from its wing roots all the way past the cockpit. It was heading straight down to earth. Then a 20mm shell hit Hoggy in the head and he fell down for a third time. He did not get up after that. Odell could see the flames streaming out of No 4 motor. He was sure the bomber was going to blow any second. Struggling out of his flak suit, he clipped on his parachute and crawled to the camera hatch which he managed to open. Lying close to the opening,
Odell prayed that, if the airplane exploded, he would be blown clear. Still connected to the interphone, he heard Rudd, his Captain, saying: ‘Hang on boys. I’m going to hit the deck.’

As they started to descend, Odell guessed they were around 27,000 feet. The big bomber was diving steeply, when, for some reason he could not understand, ‘Ford’s Folly’ began to climb at an acute angle. It stalled with all the power coming from the two remaining motors on the left wing. It rolled over to the left and started spinning. The first two or three turns of the spin were fairly flat, but then it nosed over and began to go down fast with the flames streaming from the right wing.

Odell knew that, if he were to get out at all, this was his last chance. The centrifugal forces were pinning him to the deck, but he managed to pull himself over the hatch. Just before the slip-stream caught him and pulled him out, he had time to take one last look inside the aircraft. Back near the tail, Place had climbed out of his turret and was sitting with his back to a bulkhead; his oxygen mask was off and blood streamed down his face. Hoggy was lying where he had fallen, his eyes glazed, but, as Odell looked at him, his friend half-raised his hand for a moment, then it fell back to his side. There was nothing that Odell could do to help. The next second he was gone.

The Ball Turret Gunner

It would be remiss to leave the subject of air gunners without relating the unique story of ‘Snuffy’ Smith. Staff-Sergeant Maynard H. Smith from Caro, Michigan, was the son of a circuit judge, who sadly did not live long enough to learn of his son’s outstanding courage during the course of his first mission on 1 May, 1943.

Below is the 32-year-old old ‘Snuffy’s’ own account of what happened, as he told it the day after he had flown with the 306th, of the 8th AAF, and bombed enemy installations at St Nazaire. He was a small man who fitted snugly into the ball turret of his B-17 Fortress:

We had left the flak behind us and were heading out to sea – with the Focke-Wulf 190s trailing right along. About half an hour after we had left the enemy coast I was watching the tracers from
a Jerry fighter come puffing by our tail when suddenly there was a terrific explosion, ‘Whoomph’, just like that. Boy, it was a pip. My interphone and electrical controls on my turret went out, so I decided that the best thing to do was to get up into the waist section and see what was going on.

I hand-cranked myself up and crawled out of my turret into the ship. The first thing I saw was a sheet of flames coming out of the radio room and another fire by the tail-wheel section. Suddenly the radio operator came staggering out of the flames, made a bee-line for the gun hatch and dived out. I glanced out and watched him hit the horizontal stabilizer, bounce off and open his chute. The poor guy didn’t even have a Mae West – it was burned off. He was a veteran of 22 missions.

By this time the right waist gunner had bailed out over his gun and the left waist gunner was trying to jump, but was stuck half in and half out of his gun hatch. I pulled him back into the ship and jokingly asked if the heat was too much for him. All he did was stare at me and say, ‘I’m getting out of here.’ I helped him open the escape hatch and watched him go. His chute opened OK.

The smoke and gas were really thick. I wrapped a sweater around my face so I could breath, grabbed a fire extinguisher and attacked the fire in the radio room. Glancing over my shoulder at the tail fire I thought I saw something moving and ran back. It was the tail gunner painfully crawling back, obviously wounded. He had blood all over him. Looking him over I saw that he had been hit in the back and that it had probably gone through his left lung. I laid him down on his left side so that the wound would not drain into his right lung, gave him a shot of morphine and made him as comfortable as possible before going back to the fires.

I just got started on this when the FW 190 came diving in again. I jumped for the waist gun and fired at him, and as he swept under us I turned to the other waist gun and let him have it from the other side. He left us for a while so I went back to the radio room fire again. I got into the room this time and began throwing out burning débris. The fire had burned holes so large in the side of the ship that I just tossed stuff out that way. Gas from a burning extinguisher was choking me, so I went back to the tail fire. I took off mv chute so I could move easier. I’m glad I didn’t take it off
sooner because afterwards I found it had stopped a.30 calibre bullet.

Another quick burst with the guns and back to the radio fire. Then back again to the wounded gunner to comfort him when on asking, ‘Are we almost home yet?’ I lied and told him we were. All during this time that damn FW kept coming in and I had to drop whatever I was doing and hop to the guns to keep him off. You have to show these babies that you mean business or they are supposed to finish you off real quick.

By now it was so hot that the ammunition was exploding all over the place and making a terrific racket. I didn’t dare to throw all of it out because I had to keep some for the visits of the FW.

Back to the radio room with the last of the extinguisher fluid. When that ran out I found a water bottle and emptied that on it. After that was gone I was so mad that I pissed on the fire and finally beat on it with my hands and feet until my clothing began to smoulder. Again that Focke-Wulf came in and again I answered him. This time he left us for good.

The fire was slowly dying out and the room was beginning to clear. Only then could I see the damage. The room was absolutely gutted. The radio operator’s seat was simply burned away and his gun just a melted mess. Most of the ceiling was gone and where the side walls should be were gaping holes.

I want back to the tail and put out the fire there. Talked to the wounded gunner and saw that we were approaching the coast of England. With the ship in the condition it was, I was sweating out three things. It might explode, or break in half, or I might be killed by exploding ammunition. It was lucky I paid particular attention to the control cables so the pilot could bring us home.